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The new Real Name field

Hey all,

If you noticed, we now have a "real name" field under the user name. This is so people whose user name does not comply with our "you have to use your real name" rule will now have their full name under a nickname user name.

If your real name and user name are the same , the real name field will be blank. As mine is above. There will probably be a few glitches to start and if there is one, just email or PM me.

If anyone wants to change their username, they can go into their control panel and change it.

Hope this helps clear up what's been an issue with some of our new subscribers since our last software changeover.

Hi Michael, I'm speaking in my role as moderator here. In an ideal world, yes, our user names should be our real names, but unfortunately not everyone who signs up reads the rules. After we changed web sites to this new format we have now, we no longer had the ability to change user names to real names like we used to. I'm not sure why, that's just what we were told. So....it's taken till now to figure out a way to get the real names out in the open; the real name field is our way of combating those who either don't follow the rules or didn't bother to read them.

The problem comes in when someone creates a record on PPA.com. It automatically creates a forum record for them. Because PPA.com is controlled by different software than the forum, folks don't get to see the old username requirement when they join us via ppa.com.

We could still change the username via the admin control panel, but it would break the connections between the website, the forum, the database system, and the customer service interface that we use.

For now tho, it offers users the convenience of a single login to access all areas of the site, and not having to register a second time to access the forums.

I can attest to that. Some how, when the new forum came on, I had to change my name because of the space in between and now my login does not work for the regular website. I have to do a work around (and I can't always remember how it goes) to access different areas. I log in and it welcomes me as ? and asks me to join PPA.